


The Red Won't Wash Away

by K_Popsicle



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Blood and Injury, Hurt, Hurt Natasha Romanov, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Non-con/Rape Outside of Main Characters, Other, Rape Aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:22:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24288085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_Popsicle/pseuds/K_Popsicle
Summary: Natasha makes a choice to protect Steve, it will take time to put herself back together.
Relationships: Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov
Comments: 11
Kudos: 41





	The Red Won't Wash Away

Steve cradles her up like she’ll break apart.

“I can walk.” She lies.

“I know.” He lies as well.

He carries her past the battered remains of men who where shown no mercy by a man who always gave it. She closes her eyes. She’s seen enough today.

There are no safe houses here. He wraps her in his jacket and leaves her in the car. It smells familiar, safe. She lets herself pull it up to her nose and breaths it in. It doesn’t hide the blood, or the rest, but nothing will hide that.

When he returns he has secured a room. He carries her past the reception desk briskly, as if to shield her from prying eyes, then up the stairs rather than the elevator with it’s cameras. It jars her body and knocks at the aches punched into her, she recites the Russian alphabet, then does it backwards.

He pushes the door open with his foot, and the door swings closed behind him. In the dark he hesitates.

“Where do you want to go?” He asks neutrally.

She opens her eyes but he is looking high over her head and out the hotel’s glass windows. She wants to move, she can’t. She wants to sleep, she won’t be able to. She needs to rest but her body feels both gritty and tacky in vile ways. She raises her chin in defiance he does not see because he will not look at her and says, “I need a shower.”

He takes her into the dark room and gently lowers her into the tub. She’s never been handled with such care by someone who meant it. A part of her cracks and she viciously holds it together. _Not yet. Not yet,_ she tells herself as he steps back into the hall to insert the room card. The night lights flicker on, a sullen glow from under the basin. He comes back to her and looks lost.

“Here,” She moves to take the jacket off, hurts something in her ribs she hasn’t noticed was hurt and he jerks forward to help. She freezes, he does too, his hand half extended towards her.

“I’m going to-“ He fumbles his words, his hand is shaking. From the corner of her eye she sees him pull himself together and his hand becomes as steady as his eyes. “Let me help.” He asks, and she doesn’t say no.

He moves slower, like he knows she’s only pretending to be okay and peels the jacket from her in a medically detached way. She can’t look at him knowing he can see her even in the muted light. She’s bare without his jacket and she curls her legs up to her chest to hide the damning evidence from him- even though he knows, of course he knows. He’d killed the man still in her, the men who’d been waiting for more. He knew. He knows.

He points the shower head away from her and turns the water on. His knuckles have been split open. There’s drying blood that’s run down his arms, hers, his, the men he’d beaten to death? All of them.

He tests the water and the blood rinses away like pink lemonade, droplets sliding down to his elbows and splattering the white bathmat. She feels dirty seeing him marked like that.

“I can leave-“

“No.” She immediately wants to take it back. She won’t.

He braces himself, and she feels guilt squeeze her throat and sting her eyes for doing this to him.

He breathes steadily, “Tell me if it’s too cold,” then brings the shower head over to her curled figure.

The water runs down her back, through her hair, it rolls down her face, and against her legs. Her cuts sting, her bruises smart, like a stabbing reminder of the damage that’s been done. The water’s too hot, she swallows down the rising joke before she even knows what it is and unclenches her hands.

She takes the soapy cloth off him when his hands get too close to the most damaged parts of her. “Can you leave?” She asks when he doesn’t immediately. He draws back, gets to his feet, turns away and doesn’t move. She doesn’t look up, the water sloshing down the drain is still bloody because she’s still bleeding. She doesn’t want to look at it but doesn’t know where else to turn her eyes. “I’ll get us food,” He decides at last, “I won’t be long.”

She listens to him leave, the door latching behind him, and she waits listening with shallow breaths to make sure he hasn’t tricked her. He wouldn’t. Not Steve. But maybe he would.

She puts the soapy washer in her mouth, bites down into the terry cloth, covers her mouth with both hands and muffles a scream through clenched teeth. She does it twice, three times, four and then breathes to the bottom of her lungs, spits the cloth out and lets it go.

With each exhale it leaves her, with each inhale she smells only damp air and soap. Resolutely she cleans herself, rinses the blood from the washer and does it again until her skin starts to pinken and the water is clearer than pink. She stops because the cleaning is a crutch and she soap and water can only do so much.

Steve comes back with a racket, like he wants to be heard. She’s still in the bathtub though she’s turned the water off and wrapped a towel around her body. There’s fresh blood on the towel, she retore something getting it, but she hadn’t felt equal to meeting Steve naked again.

“Sorry,” He says though he’s done nothing wrong. Then he picks her up again, carefully but decisively. He steps over the mess of bags he’s dropped inside the doorway and arranges her in the middle of the nearest double bed.

“I’m fine.” She lies as he straightens the blankets with military precision.

“Of course.” He agrees, “I bought some supplies- food- that sort of thing. When you wake up we’ll go through it all.”

“I’m not tired.” She insists.

“Then I’ll put the tv on.”

He finds a baking show of some sort, then sits on his own bed, above the covers, and keeps guard.

She watches him over the edges of the quilt he’d tucked around her like she was an infant in his care. The night sky outside is dark, the night lights barely light the room, and the lights of the tv flicker against the stony expression of his face.

He’s angry. She knows. He’s angry and it’s her fault. She made the call. She didn’t give him a choice. She’d taken the burden before he’d even known what it was. She wonders if he’ll ever be able to forgive her. What kind of an idiot ruins his friendship once they have it?

She turns away from him and somehow in the early hours of the morning she falls asleep.

She stumbles out of the bed on her own when she wakes. The sky is bright and so is the room making it impossible to hide anything. Not that she ever could from him. Those enhanced eyes probably catalogued everything before he’d even lifted her of the dirty ground, his eidetic memory will probably never let him forget. She wishes he would. Wishing gets her nowhere, she lets that go too.

He knocks on the door as she stares at her reflection blankly. “There’s some clothes out here and” as if unsure how to say it, “other things.” She hears the rasp of his hand on the door and then his retreating footsteps. He turns the tv’s volume up to deafening, and she sneaks out to find what he’s left her.

There are clothes that fit her loosely, clean underwear in her size, and a bag of pain killers, antiseptics, and dressings. She sets to work putting herself back together again.

“It’s not like it matters.” She says after they’ve driven half a day in the opposite direction. In the corner of her eyes she sees his hands flex on the steering wheel, suppressed rage waiting to boil over.

“It matters.” He tells her with too much sincerity. “You matter.”

“Sure.” She lies.

It hurts. It hurts. _It hurts._

She looks out the window at the trees as they blur past and doesn’t say anything else.


End file.
